In mid-September Queensland’s Chief Health Officer Dr Jeanette Young made a public comment that pitted the severity of COVID-19 against influenza in a bid to justify the continued border closure.

She said, unlike influenza, COVID-19 was no longer considered a respiratory disease but a serious multisystem disorder.

“That might be how it’s transmitted in the main, but it’s not flu,” she was reported as saying in The Australian.¹

While the influenza virus would kill a small number of people each year, most would survive and completely recover, she said, adding: “That’s not the case with this disease.”